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AAiT

Center for Biomedical


Engineering
Ultrasound-Overview
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Samuel M. Allem
December, 2018
What is Ultrasound
■ Ultra – beyond , above
■ Audible sound frequency 20hz to 20Khz (for young
individuals)
■ has been used to image the human body for over half a
century
■ involves transmitting small pulses of ultrasound echo
from a transducer into the body
■ ultrasound waves penetrate body tissues of different
acoustic impedances along the path of transmission,
some are reflected back to the transducer (echo signals)
■ The echo signals returned from many sequential coplanar
pulses are processed and combined to generate an image
Crucial part of Ultrasound,
the Probe
■ contain multiple piezoelectric crystals which are
interconnected electronically and vibrate in response to an
applied electric current
■ These vibrating mechanical sound waves create
alternating areas of compression and rarefaction when
propagating through body tissues
■ Medical ultrasound devices use sound waves in the range
of 1–20 MHz
Generating Ultrasound
■ Ultrasound waves are generated in pulses (intermittent
trains of pressure) that commonly consist of two or three
sound cycles of the same frequency
Generating Ultrasound …
■ Pulse repetition frequency (PRF) is the number of pulses
emitted by the transducer per unit of time

■ Ultrasound waves must be emitted in pulses with


sufficient time in between to allow the signal to reach the
target of interest and be reflected back to the transducer
as echo before the next pulse is generated
Ultrasound–Tissue Interaction
■ As US waves travel through tissues, they are partly
transmitted to deeper structures, partly reflected back to
the transducer as echoes, partly scattered, and partly
transformed to heat
■ For imaging purposes, we are mostly interested in the
echoes reflected back to the transducer

The amount of echo returned after hitting a tissue interface is determined


by a tissue property called acoustic impedance
Ultrasound–Tissue Interaction…
■ Acoustic impedance is an intrinsic physical property of a
medium defined as the density of the medium times the
velocity of US wave propagation in the medium
■ Air-containing organs (such as the lung) have the lowest
acoustic impedance, while dense organs such as bone
have very high-acoustic impedance

The intensity of a reflected echo is proportional to the


difference (or mismatch) in acoustic impedance between two
mediums
Modes of Ultrasound
■ A-Mode or Amplitude mode
– The amplitude of the echo is measured and
plotted as gray scale
■ M-Mode or motion mode
– scan lines are placed next to each others
the new one place to the right. Used for
imaging moving tissues like heart valves
■ B-mode or brightness mode
– Created by moving the scan line to ta
number of adjacent locations.

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